Celebrating life's special moments... and everything in between.
The brilliant minds over at Dynamo came up with the concept of combining original type design with gourmet chocolate. They teamed up with Suite 88, Montréal’s premier chocolatier, and let them work their magic. The result was some delicious heavyweight slabs of chocolate, engraved with positive mantras for the new year. Check out their post featuring their mouth-watering typocolate.
{images from Dynamo}
Adam J. Kurtz, a talented artist/designer I follow frequently, has a great ongoing project in action called the Postcard of the Month Club. It’s been running all year, but it’s not too late to jump on board. It includes twelve postcard prints delivered over the course of 2011, plus a welcome kit to catch you up when you first join!
Membership for 2011 is only $22 (USA), and the welcome package features one of each postcard from January 2011 until time you sign up, 2 pins, 2 pencils, and a personalized welcome letter. Monthly postcard mailings will follow until January 2012. Hooray! Sign me up!
Frame them to use as prints or mail them out with heart-warming messages to your friends. Either way, it’s an awesome gift.
Click here to purchase the postcard club membership or visit Adam’s online shop for super-serious print products and other trinkets. That not enough? Check out his wicked portfolio.
{images from Adam J. Kurtz}
David’s Tea (my favourite tea spot in Canada, of course) has finally jumped on the wedding bandwagon! Of course their tea has always been available for creating thoughtful and delicious party favours, but now they make it easier than ever with a area of the company dedicated entirely to this process. Check out all the details here.
Not that into tea yet? Well what are you waiting for? Read up on my previous posts about this awesome gift idea:
It’s Tea Time! (Part 1)
It’s Tea Time! (Part 2)
Happy steeping!
I’m a nerd. My favourite things include: dinosaurs, sharks (who are obviously just modern dinosaurs), monsters, and robots. So of course when I stumbled upon the art project Robot a Day, I had to post about it.
Featured above: Amelia Earhart bot, Pigeon bot, Beaver bot, Yeti bot, Kangaroo bot, Pirate bot, Zombie bot, Dragon bot, Luchador bot, Slow Loris bot, Donkey bot, and Nerd bot. These darn little characters are like Pokemon, I just want to collect them all! I think they would make an amazing gift though. So pick one out that matches a friend’s personality and watch their face light up.
{images from the official Robot a Day site and Anatomy of a Skirt on Etsy}
Have I ever mentioned how much I love maps as visual inspiration? Well considering this fact, stumbling upon these beautifully crafted Soft Map quilts is probably going to be one of the most exciting things to happen to me today. Soft-Maps © are quilted maps of cities and neighborhoods created by Haptic Lab Inc. that represent someone’s unique place in the world. Wrap your children in them, have a picnic, pull them close during the next Nor’easter. As a keepsake, a Soft-Map serves as an intimate reminder of home: where you’re from and where you belong. In a world that is increasingly digitized and remote, a quilted Soft-Map provides an expressive way to reconnect with your surroundings.
Not only beautiful, these blankets can be used as a mnemonic tool. As your child grows up with a Soft Map, they learn to read their neighborhood and its landmarks in a tactile, easily remembered way.
Soft-Maps are the 2x winner of the 2009 Apartment Therapy Design Showcase and have been featured in Coolhunting, PSFK, Brooklyn Based, L.A. Times and the Cooper Hewitt’s 2009 Reader’s Choice National Design Awards. The quilts are now offered in three different varieties: knotted baby quilts, readymade machine-stitched maps, and custom handmade maps.”
Check out all the details at Haptic Lab’s site.
{text and images from Haptic Lab Inc.}
The With Love type series is a gift range which is based around the form of the ampersand created by Scott Marc Berry. The designs incorporate the ampersand into sayings or phrases that can represent particular annual occasions. The range is extended across cards and gift bags.
{photos and text from Scott Marc Berry}
This week’s Friday Wrap is a little different. Instead of focusing on one type of wrapping, I’m going to show you an array of inspiration you can use for all those gifts you’ll be wrapping for the holidays. Here are some of my best tips:
1. Get soft and fuzzy. Pom-poms are easy and a perfect fit for gifts during the winter months. So pick up a few balls of yarn and follow a simple tutorial like this one here. That’s all there is to it.
2. Go metallic. The holidays are pretty much the only time of year when metallics transition from being cheesy to festive. So join in the celebration with shiny golds and silvers, whether it’s bows, wrapping paper, or decorative trims like these. Just remember to balance the metallics by placing them against wrapping materials with minimal or no pattern. Here it is wrapped against kraft paper, but a bold wrap colour like green would look great too.
3. Play around with non-traditional colours. The holidays don’t have to scream red and green. Get creative and try other colour combos. Sometimes pairings like the bright blue, green, and pink shown below are great for shaking things up, and can often feel much more festive at times. Hint: blue hues will give your gifts an “icy” winter feel.
4. Ornaments aren’t just for trees. There are lots of cheap bundles of ornaments out there, in all different shapes, colours and sizes. Why not pick up some for your gift wrapping? You’ll be surprised how much they amp up the look of your gifts. Get an assortment of ornaments and have fun mixing and matching.
5. Spell it out. Not into all those tiny gift tags? Why not spell it out louder by cutting out names from various decorative papers. Choose a favourite typeface from your computer and print out the letters on plain white paper at the right size for your gift boxes. Cut out the letters from the printer paper and use those as tracing stencils on the sheets of newspaper or maps or other fancy papers you might have lying around. No one will accidentally open the wrong gift now.
Happy holiday gift wrapping everyone!
{images from Tea and Toast, Lisa Solomon, Jessica @ Such Pretty Things, CleverIndie, and Bugs & Fishes}
There are a few tutorials floating around the internet for this DIY wrap job, but I decided to do it my own way. And a slightly easier way in my opinion. One that excludes the use of a sticker machine or mod podge.
Here’s what you need to make your own fabulous fabric tape:
Instructions:
1. Start by wrapping your gift with the Kraft paper.
2. Grab your roll of double-sided tape and cut a small to medium sized strip and stick it to the back of the fabric. Do not remove the protective backing of the tape.
3. Cut around the tape, being careful to cut around the edge very tightly and removing any frays from the fabric gently.
4. Your piece of fabric tape is ready for use! Repeat steps 2-3 and match up a few pieces of different colours and patterns to decorate your wrapped gift with.
Have fun! And make some for your friends too. But be careful… I found this project to be highly addictive because it’s SO easy.
{photos © Have & Hold Design}
I work part-time at a tea shop. So….. I drink a lot of tea. A lot. These Aladdin beauties have caught my eye, and at closer investigation (since I have a lot of experience now with travel mugs) they actually live up to their beauty in terms of function. They are even eco-friendly too, beyond the fact that you won’t be using paper cups over and over again. Some of the cups are both recycled and recyclable. How cool is that?
Check them out and shop for them here. I think they would make a perfect gift this winter. Everyone needs a warm cup of something while they’re on the go, especially in the cold. I’m smitten over the lace print one in white and warm grey.
{photos from ShopAladdin-PMI.com}
This Friday Wrap is a woodland themed package from the Bugs and Fishes blog. Now I want to wrap all my gifts this season with this ‘fall forest’ feel. Wood grain is probably one of my all time favourite patterns. And check out these great matching gift tags!
{Wrapping instructions and photos on the Bugs and Fishes blog.}
© 2012 Have & Hold Design. All Rights Reserved.
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